were rendered in Younger Pre-Folk meant she had a chance of understanding them. Not even the great Michel de Nostredame had managed to decipher Pre-Folk A.
She took her notebook out of the breast pocket of her pinafore and after carefully measuring the runic inscriptions made a sketch of them. The irritating thing was that whilst uncovering the runes was quite a coup, with this being an illegal dig she would have to keep the discovery secret. Respectable women in the ForthRight were not expected to engage in intellectual activities, especially those prohibited by the Ministry of Psychic Affairs. And if they found anything interesting in the course of these prohibited intellectual activities then, of course, respectable women couldn’t publish.
And what she had discovered was interesting. According to UnFunDaMentalism, the fact that runes were seen on the Mantle throughout the Demi-Monde indicated that the DemiMonde had once been ruled by a Master Race of pure-blooded – Aryan-blooded – Anglo-Slavic godlings known as the Pre-Folk. So to have found runes so close to the Boundary was an amazing discovery. It suggested that once, long, long ago, there had been no Boundary Layer, that the Pre-Folk had lived in what was now the Great Beyond, the land beyond the Demi- Monde.
Sketches complete, Trixie scribbled down a brief summary of the tests she had conducted. Tomorrow she’d hire one of the steam-driven drop-hammers she’d seen being used to break rocks at the docks, get it hauled to the site, erected down here in her excavation pit and then she’d see just how tough the Mantle really was.
But she’d have to be careful. To be caught using a steam hammer to smash a way through the Mantle would create a real scandal, one even her father wouldn’t have enough influence to cover up.
And as for her governess…
No, she didn’t even want to think of the hissy fit Governess Margaret would throw if she was Censured again. Then Trixie really would be unmarriageable. No respectable man in the ForthRight – now there was a contradiction in terms – would marry a Ratty. No respectable man would come near her.
Thrusting this unpleasant thought to the back of her mind, Trixie climbed to her feet and brushed the dirt off her knees. Her stockings were ruined but that wasn’t a concern: she would blame her maid for that. Better a slave got a whipping than her governess discovered that her one and only charge was a closet RaTionalist who was conducting secret and very illegal experiments designed to overturn the supposedly inviolate beliefs of UnFunDaMentalism. RaTionalists weren’t popular with the Party. Only dead RaTionalists were popular with the Party.
Lost in her cogitations, Trixie leant back against the Boundary Layer, feeling it yield just a little as she did so. She had had Luigi dig the pit in an abandoned warehouse owned by her father that butted hard up against the Boundary. Digging her excavation pit here gave her the opportunity simultaneously to examine both the Mantle and the Boundary Layer.
The Boundary Layer.
If the Mantle was a Mystery, then the ninety-four miles of Boundary Layer that circled the Demi-Monde was the Big Mystery, the Mystery at the heart of the enigma that was the Containment. More learned men (men, hah!) had studied the Boundary Layer than any other of the Phenomena in the DemiMonde. And what had their studies revealed?
Nothing.
Oh, after much deliberation and head-scratching the Party in the shape of His Holiness Aleister Crowley had officially classified the Boundary as a Selectively Permeable Magical Membrane, but that was just a fancy way of saying that neither the Party nor Aleister Crowley had a clue what it really was. All they – or anybody else, for that matter – knew was that the Boundary Layer was the transparent wall that surrounded the Demi-Monde and prevented Man from moving into the Great Beyond.
And as such the Boundary Layer was at the centre of the schism that had divided the religions of the Demi- Monde and kept them at each other’s throats. Was – as the UnFunnies had it – the Boundary Layer there to keep nasty things like Daemons out, or – as Ratties believed – was its purpose to keep DemiMondians in? That, in a nutshell, was the dilemma that was the Containment, the key philosophical question that had bedevilled thinkers since time immemorial: was the DemiMonde a sanctuary or a prison?
Whatever the Boundary Layer’s purpose, it was a wall that the harder you pushed against it, the harder it pushed back. The only things that seemed to be able to traverse the Boundary Layer were light, air and the waters of the five Spoke Rivers.
Nothing else.
It was an invisible and impenetrable wall that extended thirty feet below ground level where it made a seamless join with the Mantle and extended up… well, no one knew quite how far up into the sky the Boundary stretched. That daredevil Speke had ridden one of the new hydrogen balloons to an altitude of over six thousand feet and the Boundary had still been there, so it was anybody’s guess how high it really went.
Trixie drew a hand lovingly over the surface of the Boundary, feeling it ripple slightly as she did so. The thirty feet of topsoil of the Great Beyond was clearly seen through the Layer… so close and yet so very far away.
The strange thing was that – as far as Trixie could tell – the nanoBites that inhabited the soil of the Great Beyond never got closer than twenty feet to the surface. That was why there were so many great trees in the forests of the Beyond: there weren’t any nanoBites nibbling at their roots. Not like here in the Demi-Monde’s Urban Band. There weren’t many trees in the Urban Band as the nanoBites came within five feet of the surface and made short work of their roots. Luigi had only been able to dig the pit because it was Winter and the nanoBites were hibernating.
One day, Trixie was determined, she would penetrate the Boundary Layer and understand the mysteries of the Great Beyond. One day she would understand all the mysteries of the Demi-Monde. One day she would be the most famous of all RaTionalists.
‘It really gettin’ awful, awful late, Miss Trixie. We gotta be home real soon.’
Luigi’s whining voice cut through Trixie’s reverie. With a sigh she dragged her fob watch out of her pocket.
Dancing Daemons!
‘Why didn’t you tell me that was the time, Luigi?’ Trixie demanded as she scrabbled up the ladder leading to the top of the pit. ‘You stupid, stupid man! If I’m late it will be your fault. I’ll have Governess Margaret tan the astral ether off your useless Eyetie arse!’
5
The Real World: 12 June 2018
An?-Class Singularity (aka Dark Charismatic, Hi-Level Psychotic) may be defined as an individual demonstrating such distorted and aberrational force of personality and such singularity of purpose that they have the ability and the inclination to wrest power from existing governments, to overturn the politico-social status quo and to irreparably change existing cultural, moral and religious mores.
– The Demi-Monde® Product Description Manual: 14 June 2013
Captain Sanderson led Ella out of the General’s office and back along Fort Jackson’s labyrinthine corridors. Being out of the General’s presence helped the Captain relax: he chatted quite amiably to her as they walked. He even called her Ella. She didn’t object: the Captain was good-looking if a little on the small side, but then compared to her near six foot most men came up a little short. ‘You’re going to be meeting two disturbing people, Ella,’ he said as they strode through the building, ‘but don’t let either of them distract you too much. Everybody is a little upset by their first meeting with the Professor, and as for Heydrich…’
They walked for about five minutes and then descended – Ella had no idea how many floors – in a high- security elevator. When the elevator’s steel doors finally opened they were met by a man who was excessively lanky and thin, his emaciated body clad in an exquisitely cut – if a tad old-fashioned – suit made from worsted wool of an uncompromising black. He looked like an undertaker, though his long, Roman nose, his dark button eyes that snarled out at Ella from behind shaded glasses and his oiled black hair made him an extremely aggressive-looking undertaker.
Weird.
